Spelling pronunciation

Not to be confused with pronunciation spelling.

A spelling pronunciation is the pronunciation of a word according to its spelling, at odds with a standard or traditional pronunciation. Words spelled with silent letters (e.g. "island", "often"), or traditionally pronounced with reduced vowels or omitted consonants (e.g. "cupboard", "Worcester"), may be subject to a spelling pronunciation.

If a word's spelling was standardized prior to sound changes that produced its "traditional" pronunciation, a spelling pronunciation may reflect an even older pronunciation. This is often the case with compound words (e.g. "waistcoat", "cupboard", "forehead"). It is also the case for many words with silent letters (e.g. "often"), though not all—silent letters are sometimes added for etymological reasons, to reflect a word's spelling in its language of origin (e.g. "victual", rhyming with "little" but derived from Late Latin victualia). Some silent letters were added on the basis of erroneous etymologies, as in the case of the word "island".

Spelling pronunciations are generally considered incorrect next to the traditionally accepted, and usually more widespread, pronunciation. If a spelling pronunciation persists and becomes more common, it may eventually join the existing form as equally acceptable (for example "waistcoat" and "often"), or even become the dominant pronunciation (as with "forehead" and "falcon"). If a rare word is more often encountered in writing than in speech, the spelling pronunciation may be assumed by most, while the traditional pronunciation is maintained only by older or educated individuals.^{[citation needed]}

Prevalence and causes of spelling pronunciation

Large numbers of easily noticeable spelling pronunciations only occur in languages such as English where spelling tends not to indicate the current pronunciation. Spelling pronunciations can arise in any language when the majority of the populace only obtain enough education to learn how to read and write, but not enough to understand when spelling is not indicating modern pronunciation; in other words, many people do not clearly understand the relationship between spelling and pronunciation.

On the other hand, spelling pronunciations are also evidence of the reciprocal effects of spoken and written speech on each other. Indeed, there is quite a bit of truth in this in the sense that many spellings represent older forms and corresponding older pronunciations. Some spellings, however, are not etymologically correct.

Though many people may believe (to various degrees of accuracy) that the written language is "more correct", this (in turn) can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, with the written language affecting and changing the spoken language if a spelling does not represent an older pronunciation.

Examples of English words with common spelling pronunciations

• Dr. Seuss's name was originally pronounced /sɔɪs/ (rhymes with "voice"), similar to other German names like Freud. Most people nowadays pronounce it as /sus/ (rhymes with "juice") using English spelling rules.
• often, pronounced with /t/, which is in fact a reversion to the 15th century pronunciation, though the pronunciation without /t/ is still preferred by 73% of British speakers and 78% of American speakers. Older dictionaries do not list the pronunciation with /t/, though the 2nd edition of the OED does (and the first edition notes the pronunciation with the comment that it is prevalent in the south of England and "often used in singing"; see the Dictionary of American Regional English for contemporaneous citations discussing the status of the competing pronunciations). The sporadic nature of such shifts is apparent upon examination of examples such as whistle, listen and soften, where the t remains largely unpronounced.
• forehead once rhymed with horrid, but is now pronounced with the second syllable as /hɛd/ by 85% of Americans and 65% of people in Britain. This is in fact a reversion to its original pronunciation.
• clothes was historically pronounced the same way as the verb close ("Whenas in silks my Julia goes/.../The liquefaction of her clothes"—Herrick), but many speakers now insert a /ð/, pronouncing a voiced th. This is in fact a reversion to its 15th century pronunciation.
• salmon, occasionally pronounced with /l/.
• falcon is now nearly always pronounced with /l/, and just 3% of speakers have no /l/. The /l/ was lacking in the old pronunciation: compare French faucon and the older English spellings faucon and fawcon. This may suggest either analogical change or the reborrowing of the original Latin.
• alm, balm, psalm; often now pronounced with /l/ in some parts the United States. In most of the United Kingdom, the traditional /ɑːm/ pronunciation continues to prevail.
• comptroller, often pronounced with /mp/; accepted pronunciation is "controller" (the mp spelling is based on the mistaken idea that the word has something to do with comp(u)tare "count, compute", but it comes from contre-roll "file copy", both the verb and its agent noun meaning "compare originals and file copies").
• ye the article, pronounced as if spelled with a y instead of the printer's mark for Þ, the letter thorn. (Not to be confused with the 2nd person nominative plural ye in Middle and early Modern English.)
• taking the insular flat-topped g of northern scripts as a z- in names like Mackenzie, Menzies, Dalziel (in the last with the value of /j/ originally).
• tortilla and other words from Spanish with the double-L pronounced /l/ instead of /j/ (the latter being the closest approximation to the sound in Spanish); similarly the Italian-sourced maraschino (cherry) with /ʃ/ instead of /sk/.
• victuals, pronounced /ˈvɪtəls/ (rhyming with little), whose -c- (for a consonant lost long before the word was borrowed from French) was reintroduced on etymological grounds, and sometimes pronounced with /kt/.
• The pronunciation of waistcoat as waist-coat is now more common than the previous pronunciation weskit.
• conduit, historically pronounced /ˈkɒndɪt/ or /ˈkʌndɪt/, is now nearly always /ˈkɒnd^juːɪt/, /ˈkɑndwɪt/ or /ˈkɑnduwɪt/ in most of the United States.
• covert, historically pronounced /ˈkʌvɚt/ (reflecting its link with the verb cover) is now usually /ˈkoʊvɚt/, by analogy to overt.
• medicine, historically pronounced with two syllables but now quite often with three (some speakers use two when they mean medicaments and three when they mean medical knowledge; the pronunciation with three syllables is standard in the United States).
• Bartholomew, formerly pronounced /ˈbartəlmi/, is now /barˈθɒləmju/.
• Anthony (< Lat. Antonius), now (in the US) /ˈænθəni/.
• Numerous place-names with traditional ("old-fashioned") pronunciations have been displaced by ones influenced by the spelling: St. Louis, formerly /sænt ˈluːwiː/ now /seɪnt ˈluːɪs/, Papillion (Nebraska), formerly /pæpijoʊ/ now /pəˈpiljən/, Beatrice (Nebraska) formerly and still somewhat currently /biˈjætrəs/, now /ˈbijətrəs/. Montpelier, the capital of Vermont, is now pronounced /mɒntˈpiːliər/ instead of the French-influenced /mõpelie/.
• Sir George Everest's surname is pronounced /ˈiːvrɨst/. The mountain named after him – Mount Everest – is generally pronounced /ˈɛvᵊrɨst/ or /ˈɛvrɨst/.
• Interjections such as tsk tsk! or tut tut! (a pair of dental clicks), now commonly /ˈtɪsk ˈtɪsk/ and /ˈtʌt ˈtʌt/.
• The words Arctic, Antarctic and Antarctica were originally pronounced without /k/, but the spelling pronunciation has become very common. The "c" was originally added to the spelling for etymological reasons and was then misunderstood as not being silent.

Spelling pronunciation vs. analogical pronunciation

In some cases, we cannot tell if a pronunciation is a true spelling pronunciation. The alternative is that a word is being pronounced analogically, in essence as the "sum of its parts". Thus, forehead is commonly pronounced as a sequence of fore plus head, instead of the historically earlier "forrid"; and waistcoat is commonly pronounced as a sequence of waist and coat, instead of the historically earlier "weskit".

Opinions about spelling pronunciation

Spelling pronunciations give rise to varied opinions. Often those who retain the old pronunciation consider the spelling pronunciation to be a mark of ignorance or insecurity. Those who use a spelling pronunciation may not be aware that it is one, and consider the historically authentic version to be slovenly, since it "slurs over" a letter. Conversely, the users of some innovative pronunciations such as "Febuary" (for February) may regard the historically (and phonetically) authentic version as a pedantic spelling pronunciation.

Fowler reports that in his day there was a conscious movement among schoolteachers and others encouraging people to abandon anomalous traditional pronunciations and "speak as you spell". According to major scholars of early modern English (Dobson, Wyld et al.), already in the 17th century there was beginning an "intellectual" trend in England to "pronounce as you spell". This of course presupposes a standard spelling system which was in fact beginning to form at that time. Similarly, quite a large number of "corrections" slowly spread from scholars to the general public in France, starting several centuries ago.

Others would argue that this trend, though understandable from a socio-psychological point of view, is, from a strictly linguistic perspective, irrational, since writing was invented to represent the sounds of the language and not vice versa. According to this belief, there is no good reason to "speak as one spells", but there are many good reasons to "spell as one speaks", i.e., to reform the orthography of a language whenever it does not render its pronunciation clearly and unambiguously – which is the task of a writing system. How easy such a reform would be in practice is of course quite another matter.

A different variety of spelling pronunciations are phonetic adaptations, i.e., pronunciations of the written form of foreign words within the frame of the phonematic system of the language that accepts them: an example of this process is garage ([ɡaʀaːʒ] in French) sometimes pronounced [ˈɡæɹɪd͡ʒ] in English. Such adaptations are quite natural, and often preferred by speech-conscious and careful speakers.

Spelling pronunciations in children and foreigners

Children who read a great deal often produce spelling pronunciations, since, assuming they do not consult a dictionary, they have only the spelling to indicate how the rare words they encounter are correctly pronounced. Well-read second language learners are likewise vulnerable to producing spelling pronunciations.

However, since there are many words which one reads far more often than one hears, the problem also affects adult native-language speakers. This, in turn, leads to the language evolution mentioned above. What is a spelling pronunciation in one generation often becomes standard in the next.

In other languages

In French, the modern pronunciation of the 16th century French author Montaigne as [mɔ̃tɛɲ], rather than the contemporary [mɔ̃taɲ], is a spelling pronunciation.

When English club was first borrowed into French, the approved pronunciation was /klab/, as being a reasonable approximation of the English. The standard then became /klyb/ on the basis of the spelling, and later, in Europe, /klœb/, deemed closer to the English original. The standard pronunciation in Quebec French remains [klʏb]. Similarly, shampooing "product for washing the hair" at the time of borrowing was /ʃɑ̃puiŋ/; now it is /ʃɑ̃pwɛ̃/

In Hebrew, there is a vowel called patach genuvah, consisting of an "a" sign placed underneath a final guttural but pronounced before it: an example is ruach (meaning 'spirit'), which looks like *rucha. Where the final consonant is a sounded he (h), many speakers do indeed place the vowel after it, mistakenly pronouncing Eloah (meaning God) as "Eloha" and gavoah (meaning high) as "gavoha". Other examples of spelling pronunciations are the Sephardic "kal" for "kol" (meaning all) and "tsahorayim" for "tsohorayim" (meaning noon): see Sephardic Hebrew language.

In Swedish, there has been a tendency towards spelling pronunciation in many words. The plural ending spelled -or, which was formerly often pronounced /-er/, is now often pronounced /-ʊr/.

In Spanish, the "ch" in some German words and surnames is pronounced /tʃ/ or /ʃ/ instead of /x/. Bach is correctly pronounced [bax], and kuchen is [ˈkuxen], but Rorschach is [ˈrorʃaʃ] rather than [ˈrorʃax], Mach is [maʃ] or [matʃ], and Kirchner is [ˈkirʃner] or [ˈkirtʃner]. Other spelling pronunciations are club pronounced [kluβ], iceberg pronounced [iθeˈβer] in Spain (in American Spanish, it's pronounced [ˈaizβerɡ]), and folclor and folclore as translations of folklore, pronounced [folˈklor] and [folˈkloɾe]. In the French word élite the acute accent is often misinterpreted as a Spanish stress mark and the word is pronounced [ˈelite].

Books

• See the index entries under "spelling pronunciation" from Leonard Bloomfield, Language (originally published 1933; current edition 1984, University of Chicago Press, Chicago; ISBN 81-208-1195-X).
• Most of the etymologies and spelling histories above are taken from the Oxford English Dictionary.

See also

• Folk etymology
• Heterography
• Orthography
• Spelling reform